Capitulum I - Grammatica

I. PARTS OF SPEECH - Like English, Latin recognizes eight parts of speech. The Latin term for this is Partēs Ōrātiōnis (singular: pars ōrātiōnis)

A. Nouns - name a person (like discipulus), a place (like Rōma), a thing (like vocābulum), a quality or idea (like libertās) - In Latin these are called nōmina (singular: nōmen)

B. Adjectives - describe or modify nouns (e.g., magna īnsula, parvum oppidum, multī fluviī). In Latin these are called adiectīva (singular: adiectīvum)

C. Pronouns - stand in for nouns or noun phrases (quid?) - prōnōmina (singular: prōnōmen)

D. Verbs - express action (cantat, venit) or state of being (est, sunt) - verba (singular: verbum)

E. Adverbs - modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs (quoque, nōn, ubi) - adverbia (singular: adverbium)

F. Prepositions - join nouns or pronouns to other words in the sentence (in Italiā, in imperiō Rōmānō) - praepositiōnēs (singular: praepositiō)

G. Conjunctions - connect words and groups of words (et, sed) - coniunctiōnēs (singular: coniunctiō)

H. Interjections - express feelings or emotions [none in this chapter] - interiectiōnēs (singular: interiectiō)

II. NOUNS all have three qualities: gender (genus), number (numerus) and case (casus) . Nouns have two parts, a stem (radix) and an ending (terminātiō).

A. There are three genders. The gender of a noun never changes. It must be memorized when the word is learned. Here are the three genders and examples:

1. masculine (masculīnus) - fluvius, ōceanus, numerus -

2. feminine (fēminīnus)- littera, grammātica, īnsula

3. neuter (neuter)- oppidum, exemplum, pēnsum

B. There are two numbers. The ending of a noun shows whether it is singular or plural. Examples:

1. singular (singulāris): numerus, littera, vocābulum

2. plural (plūrālis): numerī, litterae, vocābula

C. There are seven cases. The ending of a noun shows which case it is (and whether it is singular or plural). The case indicates how the noun functions in the sentence (as the subject, the predicate nominative, the object of a preposition, etc.)

1. Here are the seven cases: nominative (nōminātīvus), accusative (accūsātīvus), genitive (genetīvus), dative (datīvus), ablative (ablātīvus), vocative (vocātīvus) and locative (locātīvus).

2. In this chapter we see two of these, the nominative and the ablative. We will see the rest in later chapters.

a. The nominative is used as a subject and as a predicate nominative.

b. The ablative is used as an object of the preposition in.

3. Here is a chart for the nominative case:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Singular	-us	-a	-um
Plural	-ī	-ae	-a

4. Here is a chart for the ablative case:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Singular	-ō	-ā	-ō
Plural	-īs	-īs	-īs

III. ADJECTIVES have the same three qualities as nouns, and very importantly, agree in number, case and gender with the noun they modify (magna īnsula, parvum oppidum, multī fluviī). They change their gender, number and case in accordance with the noun they modify.

IV. VERBS have five qualities (person (persōna), number (numerus), tense (tempus), voice (vox), mood (modus)). In this chapter we are only concerned with the verbal quality of number.

A. There are two numbers: the third person singular is marked by a -t ending, the third person plural is marked by an -nt.

B. The verb must agree in number with the subject of the sentence:

1. Singular: Rōma in Italiā est.

2. Plural: Tūsculum et Brundisium in Italiā sunt.

V. INTERROGATIVE sentences - questions - can be formed several ways.

A. Interrogative pronouns and adjectives: Ubi est Nīlus fluvius? Quid est Tūsculum?

B. The enclitic -ne is attached to the first word of a sentence in order to convert the sentence into a question. [Note we also add a question mark]. This does not suggest whether the answer is positive or negative. Examples:

1. Q: Estne Sparta oppidum? A: Est.

2. Q: Estne Sparta fluvius? A. Nōn est.

C. The word num introduces a question which expects a no answer. (Q: Num Arabia in Eurōpā est? A: Arabia in Eurōpā nōn est.)

D. The word nōnne introduces a question expecting a yes answer (Q: Nōnne Rōma in Italiā est? A: Rōma in Italiā est.)

VI. ARTICLES - like "a", "an" and "the" - do not exist in Latin. If translating into English you will need to add them as appropriate.

VII. When "there" does not refer to some place, but is used as an introductory word to indicate existence, it is an EXPLETIVE.

A. There is no Latin word corresponding to this. The idea of "there is" is inherent in est and sunt, when there is not some noun in the nominative case that makes sense as an actual subject. E.g., Sunt multae īnsulae in Graeciā. Est ūna syllaba in vocābulō "et."

B. When "there" refers to a place, the Latin word is the adverb ibi.

VIII. LATIN WORD ORDER - While word order is fundamentally important in English because the function of each word depends on where it is relative to other words in the sentence, in Latin, the function of each word is largely indicated by its ending. Accordingly word order can be much freer in terms of arranging the words so that the sentence has the desired emphasis. A typical Latin word order involves something like this (with variations and things like adjectives, prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and participles added at appropriate places): nōminātīvus, datīvus, accūsātīvus, adverbium, verbum (in English: subject, indirect object, direct object, adverb, verb)